How to Stream in High Quality with Effects to Justin.tv or ustream.tv on Ubuntu

This is a down and dirty how-to. I found that streaming via WebcamStudio resulted in higher quality streams than streaming directly to justin.tv. This approach also opens up some options not present in the browser based streaming solution justin.tv offers. WebcamStudio is not included in the Ubuntu repositories so we will have to download it manually.

2. Install the deb file by double clicking it. This will open up the Ubuntu deb installer. The deb installer is now included in the Ubuntu Software on newer releases. Click the install button. (Note: If you have Synaptic open, the installer will hang until Synaptic is closed. This is a bug in Ubuntu)

3. WebcamStudio is installed on the Main Menu under the Sound and Video section. Click the WebcamStudio link to launch the app. You can also press Alt+F2 and type in webcamstudio.

5. Everything else should be easy. Click the play button under the Source Layer section. To verify that your webcam is working, click the output menu on the menu bar and select Show Preview. This will open up a preview window.

6. As you can see the coloring is off. To fix this we are going to apply an effect by clicking the effect tab and selecting SwapRedBlue and then enabling the effect by clicking the move button.

7. Now that everything is good we are going to go to justin.tv and login to our account. Click the Go Live! button in the top right and the select webcam. If you only have one video source available on your pc, the video feed from the webcam we previously configured should be displayed.

8. Next, lets do something special with WebcamStudio. Select the Output menu on the WebcamStudio application and then select SinglePaint. This will open up another preview panel that has paint options. We can use this to paint anything on the video stream we would like. If you like these kind of things, make sure to check out the effects tab in WebcamStudio.